Administration Will Match 2002 Council Proceeds to Habitat

The Class of 2002 Council announced last night that several MIT administrators have agreed to match the donations to Habitat for Humanity raised by the Saturday’s Naughty By Nature concert.

“The Offices of the President, Provost, Chancellor and Executive Vice President will -- as a group -- provide a 2 to 1 match of the funds you raise at the concert for construction of the [Habitat for Humanity] house,” said Vice President and Secretary of the Corporation Kathryn A. Willmore in an e-mail to Sudeb C. Dalai, president of the class of 2002.

The idea for administrative sponsorship of the event came from a discussion last week between Dalai and Willmore. “I had a discussion with her and suggested that they support this or one of several other suggestions,” Dalai said.

Dalai submitted a proposal on Tuesday which asked for matching administrative support, and learned last night that a much stronger level of support had been granted. “It took a little bit of work to write the proposals that were necessary, but the turn-around was fast,” he said.

Dalai believes that this shows that students may gain administrative support for their programs by simply talking to administrators. “If you place faith in the administration and are willing to trust them, they are definitely willing to support students,” Dalai said. “This is kind of a change of pace for administrative support of students.”

Event will be campus-wide

Dalai and Class of 2002 Vice President Sonia Garg hope that this event will draw students from all segments of the MIT community. The concert includes performances by several campus groups and Naughty By Nature. “We’re hitting a lot of different areas of campus and working towards the same goal,” Garg said.

Garg hopes that this success will encourage more groups to seek support for campus-wide events. “It’s much more encouraging for students like us who want to have campus events,” she said. “We would like to see large community events like this happen again, or more often.”

Habitat hopes to build MIT house

The event’s organizers hope to meet their goal of raising $5,000 from the sale of concert tickets, which would allow a $10,000 donation by the administrators. This will go towards the $65,000 required to build a MIT Habitat for Humanity house.

“MIT Habitat is dedicated to building this house by themselves. Having MIT students’ name on a house would really say a lot about us,” Garg said.